Monday, September 24, 2012

Domain Registrar Companies - GoDaddy

Recently, I have been looking into domain registrar companies. Since I was looking at the fine print of these web sites, I thought I should share you some of the good and bad points of domain registrars, and today I am going to be focusing on GoDaddy (click for an awesome deal I found, thanks to Jupiter Broadcasting). Look at the image below as well.


If you do not know them, GoDaddy is the biggest - and sometimes pricey - domain registrar out there. They can usually be identified by their deceiving ads (I'll clarify if asked, but their ads are not bad), and their race cars, both in the Indie Car races and the NASCAR races. Danica Patrick is known as a "GoDaddy Girl", and she drives the GoDaddy car for NASCAR. The Indie Car driver is a man, and for some reason I have a very light memory of that person. I know that he was on GoDaddy's page for a very short week, Danica was back on the front page probably after a public outcry from the public.

I'm sorry to tell the women this, but most people who buy domains are guys. And we want women on the front page, not men. I'm sure all of you already know this.


As stated before, GoDaddy is the biggest registrar out there, and they are a industry standard company. With over 53 million domains registered, they have to have a good rep to keep a consumer base that large. Outside of the most recent outage, nothing has been that much of a problem regarding GoDaddy.


Many of you might want to buy a domain, whether you are getting ready to make a business, start a blog, or just own something that has something to do with you, for example you might buy a website that is also your name, just to keep it. Of course when most people sign up for a online service, they just check the box to agree to what ever terms there are, and keep going. Since you are paying money on this eventually, you should know the house rules of GoDaddy first, that way you know all disclaimers up front, and consequences if you do break the rules. On another note, I guess I should also say that you should read the terms of service, as well as the privacy policy of every company you make an account with, as ignorance of their policies is no excuse, period.


Terms

The terms of GoDaddy are quite simple, and a very small amount of it is in "legalese." Legalese is some sort of slang for legal language. Have no idea how that slang word came up, but I now know it, and it seems to be the word that everyone else is using. You can look at the official terms here, or you can also look at the frame below.
The main points in this agreement are basically in the first few paragraphs. Those pieces of text in question is the main rules, and you should not violate these rules. Violating these rules could not only get you on the wrong side of GoDaddy, but could also get you on the wrong side of the law. Basically, don't do anything stupid. You should know not to host malware using GoDaddy, do not host a child porn site, don't do anything that is going to violate someone's copyright, don't invade someone's privacy, etc. Follow these rules, and you'll be fine. If you have ever wondered, .com's get shut down pretty quickly because they are hosted by hosting companies most of the time. Anti-virus companies usually warn domain registrars about malware being hosted on their servers, and then those sites get shut down, usually pretty quickly.

Privacy

GoDaddy also has a privacy policy (of course). Their privacy policy is shorter then the terms of service, and the privacy policy is very easy to understand. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand this stuff. Actually, both agreements are pretty good in terms of being in understandable words. Compare that to other companies (I'm not naming names).

Their privacy policy is embedded below.

Overall, I hope all of you enjoyed my in depth look of GoDaddy. I'll look into other hosting companies as well. I also linked to that affiliate offer that Jupiter Broadcasting has, so why not save some money and support a good broadcasting network at the same time? Besides, a $5.99 domain is pretty good for one year. Let me know of your thoughts in the comments below. If you have any experiences with using GoDaddy, you are also encouraged to share those as well.